quilt from auntie!

I’ve known she was making this, and I picked out the colors, but I still squealed with glee when I opened up the package yesterday…

Surprise, suprise, it is raining, so I didn’t get this outside to get a good photo…

But look, she did the back too!

I love how the circular stitching offsets the angularity of the design,

I will take better pictures and post them soon. Did I say that I love love love LOVE this quilt???!!!!

boots!

I ordered a bunch because I didn’t know which would fit, and there is free shipping and free return shipping. Some of you wanted the fashion show, so here you go…

The were delivered to work, in four big boxes! It was quick work to realize that the slippers and the two black boots didn’t fit. And the plaid ones, while kind of fun, aren’t quite what I thought. So it’s down to these two,

Love the attitude of the engineer boots, and the feel of the leather,

They were a little tight though, and after putting on socks, it was clear that the ones that fit best are the tall ones. Oh, and my friends told me that the short boots wouldn’t go with a skirt (says them, I would wear them with skirts), and that they made me look short. I’m a little over 5’8″, and I like to look tall. Probably wouldn’t wear these with knee length shorts though…

They are very tall. But do they make me look tall?

And, you must admit, this has a certain appeal…

exhausted

Bed about midnight. Awake before 4. Dozed as the alarm went off. All day in interviews.

I’m more than VERY happy it’s the weekend! Hope you have a good one. I plan to relax. Relax as hard as I can…

new sink

The new sink is in and is in use!

I know, I know, some of you might be concerned about that dark wood. And it is probably stained because of moisture problems in the past. But it’s dry and solid.

Oh, and yesterday, as I was rinsing the bits out of the sink I remembered I have a sprayer now! Such a pleasure to use!

fresh counters

Even though wood around the sink could be problematic, my view is that if it gets water ON it, I’ll see the water and wipe it up. Versus before when the water would get under the formica and not be seen OR accessible to wipe up. Besides, the drain board sits to the right of the sink, so you don’t see that line between where the formica was and where it never was.

I used a mixture of beeswax and food grade mineral oil to seal the wood. One might think that one could find food grade mineral oil (recommended to seal butcher block and wooden counters) at a hardware store or lumberyard that sells countertops. Nope. It’s at the drugstore, next to all of the enema stuff. I’ll probably re-seal the area around the sink a couple of times a year… doesn’t take long, and the beeswax (which I have a lot of, left over from the lotion making extravaganza) smells so wonderful.

Also sanded and refreshed the other counter, but this one with just mineral oil since there’s generally not water on the counter.

Put a toaster oven, water boiler, jar of dog biscuits, and basket for bread on the counter, and you can see I live with a small kitchen!

recertified

As a tai chi for arthritis instructor!

Here we are doing the opening movement to the Sun 73 form (there’s a video demo at that link!). I love the name of the movement “leisurely tying the emperor’s coat”… just don’t whack him in the face as you do!

Can you tell that this gentle tai chi is good for me? I try to keep the hard style tae kwon do right out of it!

I’m in the red pants (no surprise, eh?). The guy in the front is a master trainer, Marty, who makes commerative coins. He came all the way up to the hinterlands of Lincoln, Maine to work with us.

Last night I joined the tai chi for health community. I’ve been wanting to teach the tai chi for arthritis/for health for the Eastside Wellness Center (the gym at work), but the problem has been that the gym is run by the hospital, not the state. And for them to cover my liability (which I need to teach, won’t teach without that coverage), I need to be a hospital employee… which would mean creating a new job, posting it, open competition, yadayadayada. But if I have my own liability, I can be contracted out. I told them that I wasn’t seeking payment for teaching the class, but if I have my own liability insurance I will seek payment. Now I have to figure out how much to charge. Maybe it’ll help defray the loss of income from the shut-down days.

knitting?

Finished the log cabin socks. Need to tink back a row on the shawl. Making swatches for a sweater out of Nanny Kennedy’s yarn…

Yesterday the leaky kitchen faucet (leaking in three places, below each of the faucet handles and recently from the tap, which was getting worse) made me nuts enough that I pulled out the hot tap and discovered that the whole thing needs replacement. This faucet is at least 25 years old, and 8 or more years ago a single valve stem cost over $40.

It’s all rusted inside too…

Plus there are some drain problems,

It doesn’t look too bad,

but I’ve been wanting that bit of formica out from under there since we moved in over 10 years ago.

And so this morning, I bought a new sink (pretty sure it’s same as the old one) and new faucet, and took out the old.

Home repair on an old house is a can of worms. You think you’re doing a relatively simple thing, and the next thing you know, you have more to do (think about that floor project, which started about 5 years prior with taking out the old rug, finding two more rugs below it, and two layers of linoleum…).

WTF were they thinking putting in the formica backsplash like this?

But worse, is this rot,

My plan was to sand down the wood, oil and wax the bejesus out of it and have a plumber install the new sink. But now it looks like I have to do something in the back. Since it’s wood, I think it’s do-able. Anybody out there have a wooden counter under their kitchen sink?

I know that wood is warm, “softer” than, say, granite, and it is actually more sanitary than formica. I figure if we see the water on the wood, it’ll get wiped up… and there won’t be that nasty issue of water seeping under the formica seem and causing hidden troubles.

So I had to take today off of work. Here’s hoping I’ll have a working kitchen sink before too much time goes by. It’ll definitely happen one way or the other much MUCH more quickly than the floor did! Luckily we have another kitchen sized sink just around the corner, so I don’t have to haul dishes upstairs to the tub. Ugh.

As in I’m reporting on their progress, and they are progressing!

One done, and the other nearly so. They do fit a men’s 11, so they are loose on me here.

Quick and easy, and I like the patterning, especially down the heel. I left the tail on the toe, in case they were too short. Looks like they’ll only take 300 yards, versus the 400 called for for the men’s size 9. The knitting universe is sometimes odd like that.

weekend creature feature

Went for a quick kayak yesterday on the Kennebec River. I thought maybe I’ll see a sturgeon. I saw six!! No pictures, though, because I didn’t have my camera. And in truth, if I did, all you would see is a splash or a ripple in the water.

Check out Linwood Riggs’ pictures of sturgeon… yowsa!

And this quick video, I was just downstream of the high bridge, between Augusta and Hallowell…

They surely are some ugly fish.

nasty slugs

Guess who sat on a slug and forgot about it when she did laundry?

This is after they were washed! So my advice to you, if you ever sit on a slug, is to pre-wash your clothes! There was still a large slimaceous factor involved here. The pants are all good now…

very cool slugs

Check out what I saw in Florida! Sadly didn’t get a picture of it, but it looked exactly like this one!

Sea hare, schmee hare… they are sea slugs…

Knitting has been going on, slowly… pics soon….